This invention relates in general to mining equipment and in particular to a new and useful drive station for a longwall conveyor.
The invention relates particularly to a drive station for a chain conveyor such as a longwall conveyor, having a sprocket wheel mounted at the drive end of the chain conveyor in the drive head of a machine frame and having a drive unit flanged on the side of the sprocket wheel on the outside of the machine frame.
In chain conveyors and in particular longwall conveyors with a winning machine such as a coal plane, cutting machine, or the like, guided at the coal face, a constant problem is the tensioning of the conveyor chain and the plane chain. To overcome this, a machine frame has become known which is designed as a frame telescoping in a longidinal haul direction. Such a telescoping machine frame, which is normally connected to the actual conveyor trough with the interposition of a connecting trough, has several disadvantages. In the first place, the machine frame is equipped, as are the connecting trough and conveyor trough, with guide elements for the winning machine. Such guide elements as plane guiding segments or cutter guiding segments can in practice not be carried out as telescoping elements. But this is necessary if the winning machine is to be guided up to the drive head of the machine frame to avoid dead space. Consequently, in the case of a telescoping machine frame, guiding of the winning machine up to the head end of the chain conveyor must be given up and a dead space accepted. Moreover, separate tensioning of the conveyor chain and plane chain is not possible, because due to the telescoping machine frame, tensioning of the conveyor chain necessarily entails tensioning of the plane chain as well. The two chains, however, require a different chain tension, so that separate retensioning or relaxing of the plane chain is always necessary. This is not only expensive but also required relatively long tensioning distances, hence a long machine frame. This is what the invention intends to remedy.